The Knight Who Devours Magic - Chapter 51

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 51. Chloe Rommel
“Grrr. There. There.”
The trail of Demonic Energy left behind by the Red Meteor was fading far faster than expected.
Because of it, the fine horses provided by Trian had no choice but to gallop all day long without pause.
Neeeiiiggghhh!
By the time they reached the mountain that appeared to be where the Red Meteor had come down, the animals collapsed with foam flecking their mouths.
“There. The mountain!”
His voice came in jagged bursts, like the cry of some wild beast.
Munno, his muscles swollen far beyond their normal size and his fangs bared, didn’t spare a glance for the fallen horse before launching himself up the mountainside at a sprint.
Crackle-snap.
Metal Chains erupted naturally from the armor on his limbs, coiling around the trees of the forest and hauling his body up the slope.
“What in the—what is that……?”
Chloe Rommel, the other vice-captain of the Trian Knight Order, watched the strange feat with widened eyes and found herself recalling the words of the Count.
— If high-ranking mages could be tracked by special senses or artifacts alone, the Mage Empire could never have grown to this size.
— I acknowledge Munno’s talent, but it’s time he collided with reality and knew despair. For now, follow quietly and observe.
— If he truly finds them? That’s why I’m sending you. If—just in case—something like that happens, you must bring back Munno alive no matter what. Even at the cost of everything else. Without fail.
Sixteen years old, she’d been told. Barely past his Coming of Age Ceremony.
At that age, a 2-Star Rank talent was certainly a prodigy of the age.
And if he could chase a mysterious Demonic Energy trail for more than a day without stopping, he was either mad or genuinely gifted—one or the other.
Yet apart from that promising talent and ability, it seemed he lacked something fundamental.
“Sigh…… My apologies, all of you.”
Chloe closed the horses’ eyes, her brow furrowed.
She pursued Munno into the mountains a step behind, her movements quiet but swift.
Still.
“……I’ll need to teach him some manners about handling animals.”
The words she left behind held little warmth.
“Grrr…….”
At the point where the Red Meteor had crash-landed.
The Demon Devourer, who’d done nothing but charge blindly forward, swept his gaze around the area where the rich magical scent lingered.
But.
‘Nothing?’
The Demonic Energy trail left by the Red Meteor had persisted for two days.
Yet now that he’d reached the end of its path, no trace remained to be felt.
“Grrr. This is…….”
And from behind him.
Chloe appeared with a soft rustle, her voice flat as she asked.
“You lost them?”
“…… Yes.”
The moment Munno realized no more Demonic Energy could be sensed, he wrenched control back from the Demon Devourer.
Crack-crunch.
His body returned to normal, naturally.
With reason restored, one fact he’d overlooked came back to him.
‘I couldn’t follow them even when that mage left behind a false corpse and vanished. That’s right. That’s exactly what happened. Damn it.’
He scanned the surroundings again, hoping that maybe the mage’s injuries were serious enough that they couldn’t fully mask their Demonic Energy this time.
But there was no way he could detect a Demonic Energy trail in his normal state that he’d missed even while in the Demon Devourer form.
And watching his crestfallen expression, Chloe suddenly said something entirely unexpected.
“Close your mouth.”
“Pardon?”
He turned reflexively at the words.
Crack!
A sharp striking sound, like stone shattering, rang clear and bright through the quiet afternoon mountainside.
“Ow, why? Why would you……?”
Munno stared at her with aggrieved eyes at the tingling blow to the back of his head.
“Treat animals with care.”
But all he heard was this sudden pronouncement.
“…… Huh?”
“Don’t understand?”
Only when he saw Chloe glaring down at him with sharp eyes did realization dawn.
“Oh—you mean because of the horse……?”
“Yes. Of course, if necessity demands sacrifice, then so be it. But offer even a moment of mourning for them. That is the bare minimum duty a human must uphold.”
“Pardon?”
Munno couldn’t help but gape at those words.
In his past life, he’d heard animal lovers say such things, but he never expected to encounter that sort of sentiment in a fantasy world where human rights had hit rock bottom.
A moment later, the count’s words came flooding back to him.
— She’s a bit unusual, so handle her temperament carefully. She mainly uses a bow, dagger, and short sword, and she’s skilled at hunting too. You’ll have plenty to learn from her.
‘A bit unusual?’
Perhaps she’d taken offense at his vacant expression.
Chloe’s already sharp eyes turned positively fierce.
“After this is done, you’re getting a lesson in etiquette from me. Without fail. Do you understand?”
Surely not a lesson in how to treat animals?
“I— yes, I understand.”
Flustered as he was, he could only bow his head.
No matter how urgent things were, he had been rough with the horse, and that was a fact.
Besides.
“Then follow me. Even without a trace of Demonic Energy, people leave traces behind. From here on, I’ll take the lead.”
Chloe’s words gave him more than enough reason to fall into line obediently behind her.
* * *
“How is Elder Karin’s condition?”
“…It’s improving.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to inform him now?”
“Then he’d grow angry, and Karin would be furious as well. If that happens…”
“Either way, we’re dead men for sure.”
A man with an irritable expression let out a heavy sigh.
“I didn’t become a doctor for this.”
“That’s the truth. Being stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, of all places…”
A gaunt man voiced his agreement vehemently, but there was nothing to be done about it.
In the Mage Empire, doctors were respected. But in other nations where the temple’s influence ran strong, they were treated as quacks or half-rate priests—that was the reality.
More than that, these men, who had committed crimes in the Mage Empire, were bound by their lives to this organization, which had rescued them moments before their execution.
It wasn’t mere metaphor—they were literally bound by a Magical Contract that could cost them their lives.
“There’s no helping it. Do what you’re told and be done with it.”
“Still, you’ll be finishing your three-year contract soon, won’t you? Then you’d have a month’s leave coming…”
“I’m not taking leave.”
“What? Why not…?”
Olson didn’t bother answering his subordinate’s question.
‘He’d laugh and call me a coward.’
But he had no intention of taking leave, not even if they forced him out the moment his three-year contract ended—not until he saw with his own eyes what had happened to one of his seniors who’d cheerfully gone on leave once their contract was up.
The organization claimed they’d simply reassigned him to another hideout or branch facility…
But he couldn’t bring himself to believe that.
“…In any case, tell those brilliant mages of ours to reinforce the perimeter defenses.”
“Who would come out to this remote hideout in the middle of nowhere? You yourself said we haven’t seen another soul in three years besides our own people.”
“…What happened to your medical training? The situation’s different now. Different!”
“Yes, sir! I’ll tell them at once!”
He might be “just a doctor,” but in the past three years at this hideout, there wasn’t a mage who didn’t owe him their life.
These mages living in the Iron Kingdom, most hostile to the Mage Empire, would never think of crossing such a capable doctor.
So long as an elder didn’t make a surprise visit like this, Olson was essentially the king of the hideout.
‘What kind of king is one who can’t even leave?’
The thought of his circumstances pulled another sigh from him.
And with it came the bitter memory of his past once more.
‘If only I hadn’t conducted those human experiments…’
Was execution really the answer for a young doctor trying to improve his craft, simply because he’d done a bit of testing on slaves?
‘Just a few hundred slaves, and they sentence a doctor as skilled as me…’
As he brooded pointlessly over the past, the eerie silence beyond the door where his subordinate had rushed out began to gnaw at him.
This hideout, carved from a cave and layered with a Phantom Barrier to block outside intrusion, should echo even the smallest interior sound.
“What’s that idiot doing out there?”
The moment he irritably pulled the door open.
“Hush.”
A blade pressed against his throat, accompanied by a voice barely above a whisper.
His heart lurched, but faced with those eyes brimming with deadly intent, Olson found he possessed no courage whatsoever to cry out.
“This one too?”
His mind raced, trying to decipher what those words could mean.
Fortunately, the question wasn’t directed at him.
“Yes. Since I’m not a Mage, I couldn’t sense it.”
Behind the fierce-eyed woman stood a young man—no, a boy with an unguarded face—wearing Silver Armor that clashed oddly with his dull, dark-toned plate armor.
At his answer, Olson desperately chimed in agreement.
“I’m… not a Mage either…”
“Ah, I see.”
The woman nodded as if she’d finally understood.
Just when he thought he might live.
Thunk.
Something cold drove deep into his throat, tearing a searing pain through him.
“Guh…”
Olson’s mind stopped working in that instant.
“…Useful, but with definite limits. That’s quite the ability.”
Munno smiled bitterly at Chloe Rommel’s assessment and nodded.
“Should I apologize?”
“No—thanks to you, hunting Mages became easy. I’d call that a compliment. It’s impressive that you found and dissolved a Phantom Barrier invisible to the naked eye.”
They were conversing only in hushed tones out of consideration for the cave’s environment.
To a normal person, it would have been little more than unintelligible muttering, but the two of them had no trouble understanding each other.
Even as they exchanged those guarded words, Munno caught precisely the smile Chloe Rommel wore in the dim light of the torches.
‘So the ruthless one knows how to smile after all.’
He swallowed the thought he couldn’t voice aloud and managed a smile of his own.
“Thanks to the Artifact, really.”
“…Is that so?”
The enigmatic quality of Chloe Rommel’s smile nagged at him, but this wasn’t the moment to press the matter.
“What about below?”
“Still the same.”
“One presumed witch? And one 4-Circle Mage, three 3-Circle-rank Mages?”
“Yes.”
“As I thought… Mages really do become remarkably sloppy once their magic is broken.”
Chloe Rommel let out a soft laugh and was about to turn toward the passage leading deeper into the cave.
Then he moved ahead of her.
“From here on, I’ll take the lead.”
“…Why?”
“My armor is sturdier than yours. Especially if what we’re facing is magic.”
Munno pointed out, with uncharacteristic bluntness for a knight, that Chloe Rommel’s defensive gear was only light armor.
“…Now, of all times?”
Chloe Rommel raised her Dagger and smirked again—a predator’s confidence earned from silently cutting down dozens of lesser Mages.
That savage certainty struck Munno speechless, and he replied with a wry smile.
“Because of that witch.”
He didn’t want to cede his quarry to anyone else.
Of course, the small prey she’d been disposing of so far were beneath his concern.
But since he couldn’t say that openly, he’d dressed it up appropriately.
“…Clever. You even know how to be considerate.”
It seemed he’d earned some points with Chloe Rommel after all.
Of course.
“Then…”
“Keep your heels up… or better yet, take off those Metal Boots entirely, would you?”
“…They’re an Artifact.”
“Tsk. Stubborn… but fine, suit yourself. When the time comes, make up for it with your body.”
Though he’d just cost himself the points he’d gained.
Munno turned, his face already flushed not with Chloe Rommel’s evaluation but with anticipation of his quarry.
‘Calm down. Calm down. It’s dangerous prey.’
One moment of carelessness and he might be the one who died.
Controlling as best he could the roar of his Demon Devourer echoing through his mind, Munno moved forward with greater caution.
Step. Step.
“Heels. If you can’t, then on the balls of your feet at least.”
“…Yes.”
Chloe Rommel’s rebuke helped keep him grounded in reason.
The deep darkness that the scattered torches couldn’t quite drive back was, mercifully, making him a little more composed as well.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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